Re: [Hurdextras-hackers] Unionfs and Netio

[Wolfgang Jaehrling]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 03:03:37PM -0500, Matthew Grant wrote:
> I'm just wondering if someone could give me a little briefing on
> what Unionfs and Netio can do for me.  I have them both installed
> and would like to start playing with them. Maybe a settrans example
> also, if available.

The mailing list archives contain more than enough information about
them, but I have to admit that it isn't always easy to find the
relevant e-mails; however, calling them (not via settrans, but
directly) with the option `--help' should give most relevant
information.

Short summery: Unionfs unites directory trees:

~$ ls
foo/  bar/
~$ ls foo
frob   fyyy   fzzz
~$ ls bar
barf/  frob
~$ settrans -c foobar /hurd/unionfs foo bar
~$ ls foobar
barf/  frob   fyyy   fzzz

In this case, `foobar/frob' would be equivalent to `foo/frob', since
`foo' was given prior to `bar' on the command line to unionfs.

Netio gives access to TCP and UDP connections over the file system.  I
think one can say that it relates to `netcat' in the same way in which
named pipes relate to unnamed pipes.  I don't remember exactly how to
use it, but something like:

~$ settrans -c /dev/net /hurd/netio
~$ cat /dev/net/tcp/192.168.0.1/13  # Connect to TCP port 13

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang